


Insurance for the Damned

by stilitana



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Accidental Villainy?, Artificial Intelligence, Betrayal, Dubious Morality, During & Post-Canon, Falling In Love, Multi, Permanent Injury, Redemption, Slow Burn, making amends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 03:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18217289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilitana/pseuds/stilitana
Summary: Caught up in the fight for the Mojave, the Courier struggles to make the right choices but alienates those he holds dear as he strays further from his humble origins as a mailman and begins to become like those he once opposed who make decisions in the name of others for their own good.In the aftermath of the fight for the dam and an independent New Vegas, the Courier tries to make amends and improve life for those living in Freeside. The key to his plan? Some highly dubious tinkering with Yes Man's programming.





	Insurance for the Damned

1

            The pistol in the Courier’s hands glimmered dully like a pearl as he spun its cylinder, his gaze fixed on the fire crackling before him. From the grips, Our Lady of Guadalupe stared eternally downwards, head forever bent in prayer. He had acquired the gun just that morning after relieving it of its former owner and already had the urge sometimes to press his lips to her image. He resisted. It was always the most fucked-up guys who picked up tics like that, putting too much spiritual or magical significance on their weapons and their nasty habits. Still. She was like the icon and the statue that had sat in the corner of a house somewhere in Nevada, where the candle burned on holy days, where he knelt beside his mother, or had he imagined that?

            Memories could be manufactured. Even if they started out real, they were like a cloth a child rubs for comfort, and the more times they were taken out and reconstructed, the more worn they became.

            “Quit fondling your pea-shooter,” Veronica said. “Or at least do it in your private time.”

            Pedro gave her a grin but kept turning the gun over in his hands, rubbing his thumb up and down the smooth pearl of the grips, the ivy engraved on the barrel. “Jealous?”

            Veronica gagged and rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. What is it with you and dinky little guns anyway? You’ve been using the same 9mm forever. Don’t tell me it’s for luck. You seem like the kind of guy who might get attached to a gun.”

            “This isn’t the same. Take a look,” he said, handing it to her.

            Veronica turned the gun over in her hands, made a face. “Ew. It’s a little gaudy, don’t you think? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a nice piece of design as much as the next guy, but when people start making the stuff that kills people all flowery – that’s another thing. Where the hell’d you get this?”

            “Somebody who won’t need it anymore.”

            “Are you serious? We’ve been on the Strip all day, how—”

            She stopped, stared hard at him for a moment. “Oh. You found him? That guy you were looking for?”

            The Courier nodded. “Turned out to be the easiest thing I’ve done since Goodsprings. Makes me look a little stupid now, having wasted all that time beforehand, running around the desert and doing everybody’s errands for – what, a month? Jesus.”

            “You said you weren’t ready, right? You were figuring out where he was, what you were gonna do about it, you know, getting supplies and stuff.”

            “I knew where he was. Could’ve walked straight to the Strip, day one. Well, not day one, I wasn’t doing a lot of walking on day one, but you know what I mean.”

            “It’s hardly a bad thing that you like to help people. I wouldn’t call it a waste of time, I mean, what have you been up to – sucking up to every two-bit brahmin herding settlement you wander into and wiping out legionaries?”

            “It was not entirely selfless, Veronica.”

            “Well, is anything ever?”

            “I think I knew it would be that easy.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah. It was over too quick.”

            Veronica stared into the fire for a moment, twisting the fabric of her scribe robes. After a while she said, “Do you wanna play Caravan or something?”

            The Courier snorted.

            Veronica blushed. “I didn’t mean to like, change the subject, I just don’t know what to—”

            “It’s fine. You’re the best.”

            “I bet you say that to all the ladies and gents. In fact, I know you do. You flirt with anything that moves.”

            “What can I say? Some might call be predictable – I say consistency is a virtue.”

            “Uh-huh. And what did you say to get that weird doctor guy to follow you?”

            “Arcade? You spoke?”

            “Oh, yeah, he and I had a grand old time while you were in the Tops, hanging out up in your freaky new casino which apparently nobody else has been inside, like, ever? I thought I might enjoy some alone time, but no, apparently you’re storing an entire harem up there. Seriously, Six. You pick up strays like a dog gets fleas.”

            “That’s not a very flattering comparison for either of us, Veronica.”

            “No, I guess it isn’t.”

            “What did you think of him?”

            “Of who?”

            “Arcade.”

            “Well, you know. He won’t be winning any awards for his conversation skills. Although next to your sniper buddy? He’s a goddamn chatterbox.”

            “I thought he was funny.”

            “You thought he was hot.”

            “Well, I have eyes.”

            “And a type, apparently.”

            “A type? No, no, no. Never had one of those.”

            “Um, you totally do? Weirdly intense, secretive, emotionally aloof guys, or chicks with a hair-trigger temper who probably start bar fights for fun.”

            “I assume you mean Cass.”

            “Is that her name?”

            “You two didn’t talk?”

            “I don’t think she’d like me.”

            “Give her a chance, she’s a good person.”

            “Oh yeah, a real sweetheart. Anyway, your type. Wounded idealists. That’s my primary diagnosis.”

            “That’s everybody.”

            “I guess, sooner or later. Although he’s definitely got a pragmatic streak. I couldn’t really figure out how you got him to sign on. He seemed too level-headed for your usual spiel of join me so we can run around kicking ass and taking names just because we can.”

            “I think I said something about how I could use a handsome doctor out in the big bad Mojave.”

            “You did not.”

            “I did, and it worked.”

            “Jesus Christ. I take it back, he’s not level-headed, he’s a doofus.”

            “Yeah, yeah. I’d helped the Followers out a little that day, he probably figured he could do more good for them my way for a change, instead of hanging around in some dusty old tent.”

            “Wow. That was almost humble.”

            “I’m a little disappointed. I thought you and Cass might hit it off.”

            “Were you trying to set us up?”          
            “No way, I just thought you might be friends.”

            “Because we have so much in common, right? She likes day-drinking, I like taking apart old-world tech and live in a hole in the ground.”

            “And punching.”

            “Oh, yes. Don’t forget the punching. What are we doing out here, anyway?”

            “I thought we’d go to some places you mentioned. I’ll be going away for a little while soon. But before that I thought we had time for dress shopping.”

            Veronica smiled and bumped her shoulder against his. Her smile was like a child’s – mischievous, unabashed, wondering.

            In hindsight he thought the way it made his chest feel tight and his stomach sick should have been a warning – a preview of the future guilt, which was so great it radiated outwards into the past. Had he known then he would betray her? He wasn’t sure.

            She didn’t smile that way at him anymore and wouldn’t again.

 

2

            “It’s incredibly beautiful, really, during the two seconds now and then when I forget I’m breathing in fungal spores.” Arcade stepped over the body of a spore carrier and grimaced.

            “I thought you’d think so. That’s why I brought you along.”

            “How thoughtful.”

            “I didn’t know it would be full of monsters.”

            “Because when is a vault ever a death-trap, right?”

            “I don’t know, I really haven’t been in many. This is my second one.”

            “What was the first?”

            “Twenty-one.”

            Arcade gave him a deadpan look as he hunched over a terminal, the green glow reflecting on his face. “That doesn’t count. That’s a hotel.”

            “Have you been in many vaults?”

            “Can’t say that I have. But I know they’re always trouble.”

            “I wouldn’t be shocked, if you were from a vault. You’ve sort of got the look.”

            “And what look is that? Soft, gullible, easily mugged?”

            “I was thinking more like not obviously malnourished, disfigured, or irradiated. Plus, tall. You’re really tall.”

            “Vault-dwellers have always sort of given me the creeps, to tell you the truth. I think sometimes they’re even more unstable than the rest of us? I mean, imagine the shock. Generations of being part of some sadistic experiment, only to emerge into a nuclear wasteland. Not that the rest of us are paragons of mental stability, but honestly, that’s got to do something to you.”

            “Looting vaults might be a good idea for the Followers. Lots of untouched medical tech down there.”

            “If any of it’s left and hasn’t already been taken, it’s probably for a good reason. Like, say, that the air is poison. Can we hurry up? I think I feel my lungs growing things.”

            “I’m sorry. You can leave, if you want. I can’t until I find Keely.”

            “No, no. I’m not leaving – just hurrying would be nice.”

            Six jacked his pip-boy into the terminal. “Soon as I download all this data for Hildern.”

            “I suppose it might do some good, even if he is not the most…scrupulous researcher I’ve known.”

            “I know he’s shady. But I’m here anyway, and aside from the whole infectious spores thing – I mean, if he figures out how to get rid of that part, this seems like important information. Too good to just destroy or leave behind. Besides. I trust that woman researcher in his lab. She’d tell me if he was trying to do anything nefarious with it.”

            “Like make a bio-weapon.”

            “Exactly.”

            “You can’t possibly think you’ll single-handedly be a watchdog over every well-meaning but questionably moral person you help.”

            Six shrugged and unplugged his pip-boy, moving towards the stairs. “You just do what you can and don’t worry about the rest.”

            “If only.”

            Six input the terminal password. The door swung open, revealing a musty, dark cave.

            They looked at each other.

            “Of course, she has to be in there,” Arcade said.

            “No question. After you?”

            “What a gentleman,” Arcade muttered, hunching his shoulders and clutching his gun as he went into the cave, casting one last distrustful look at ED-E as he went.

            Six followed, his body blocking the light from the room and casting a long shadow.

 

            They spent the night at Camp McCarran.

            “This place makes my skin crawl,” Arcade muttered. They’d spread bedrolls on the terminal floor, in a corner behind a screen.

            “You don’t like the NCR much.”

            “It’s nothing personal. I’m sure it’s full of sincere people with good intentions who really think they’re doing what’s best for everybody. It’s just that the most corrupt and power-hungry have a way of clawing their way to the top of the ladder, and if you’ve got an army of essentially good people following bad orders – well, you do the math.”

            “Who do you think should be in charge?”

            “That’s putting it a little simply, isn’t it? I mean, in a perfect world everybody would be in charge of themselves, right?”

            “Not everyone would say so.”

            “No. No, I guess you’ve been talking to Colonels and Generals and, and Mr. House.”

            “Don’t hold it against me.”

            “I’m trying not to.”

            Six rolled onto his stomach and propped himself on his shoulders to better stare at Arcade. “Hey. Don’t think I agree with everybody whose opinion I entertain. I’m just feeling my way through this, trying to be careful and go slow, not do anything rash before I feel like I understand what I’m dealing with.”

            “I get that, that’s admirable. I guess I just – can’t imagine needing more than five seconds to decide, hey, probably a House-run autocracy isn’t the best thing for anybody but House. But that’s just me.”

            “There are reasons for the way I do things, Arcade. I can’t cross House yet. Nobody stands to gain anything from me throwing away the only access any of us have to him.”

            “And what can anybody gain from you running his errands?”

            The Courier gave Arcade a measured look. “If you act too hastily in declaring a side, you might lose out on certain advantages.”

            “You’ll have to choose a side eventually.”

            “Arcade. I know my side.”

            “Oh, yeah?”

            “Yeah. My own.”

            “Ah. Well, at least you’re up front about that.”

            “I don’t mean I’m out for myself alone. I mean I’m making – doing my best to make decisions for myself, instead of just throwing my hat in the ring for some bigger faction and hoping for the best. My side is your side. The Followers, Freeside – to some extent the Strip and all the people in the Mojave just trying to get by. I’ve got no personal quarrel with most individuals in the NCR. Unfortunately, when you start talking NCR, you aren’t talking about individuals anymore. I’m with people, not factions.”

            “Oh. That’s good to hear.”

            “You didn’t really think I was House’s lackey, did you?”

            “Honestly? I don’t know what to think. One day some apparently indestructible good Samaritan wanders in out of the desert and offers to help, for no reason other than he’d like to be of use – and now here we are, in the middle of a war, doing stuff that really might tip the balance in somebody’s favor. Where the hell did you come from?”

            “I told you, Goodsprings.”

            “But why – and how are you in the middle of all this?”

            “I’ve wondered that myself.”

            “When you went after Benny, did you suspect the chip was so important?”

            “Well, I figured he probably had a compelling reason for having shot me over it, but of course I didn’t know.”

            “Did you plan on taking it all along? I mean – how early on were you angling for…you know. Getting in the mix. The power struggle.”

            “Absolutely not. I could’ve just as well have gone back to the Mojave Express, picked up where I left off. I even wondered why bother going after him, sometimes.”

            “Well, he did shoot you.”

            “Don’t get me wrong, I was mad as hell about that. But it wasn’t – that’s a small thing, right? Not small to me, I mean it’s…on a personal level, that’s just between me and Benny, right?”

            “I don’t think I understand.”

            “It’s just sometimes it feels like this whole thing has gotten a little out of hand? Like, one day you’re the fucking mailman, minding your own goddamn business, the next, bam, some greedy fucker shoots you in the head. That should be that. But then I don’t die, and me following Benny, it’s not just me wanting answers or revenge or whatever, it gets blown up into this – it turns out I’m now in the middle of some Mojave wide power struggle, and every single major player wants a piece of me, like, what the hell, right, what did I do except have a skull so thick it withstood a couple shots to the head, right? It’s not – that’s not how stories start. Not about anybody worth telling one about, not about anything noble or whatever. That was just a goddamn coincidence. Bad luck, is all. Could’ve been any damn courier. Didn’t have to be me. It sounds like I’m whining, that’s not what I mean, I’m not looking for pity or anything, these things happen – and that’s my point. There’s just this big gap between who I am, and what I thought I was doing, going after Benny – and what’s happened, you know? It’s got all these levels, right, and I’m on the small one – and then there’s the NCR, and House, and Caesar, and so my getting shot in the head isn’t just my personal misfortune anymore, it’s this minor act in a big play that’s going on around us? And so, I guess the point of all this was that in the end, killing Benny was over too quick. I didn’t even really mean it. I don’t know that I would have, if he hadn’t drawn his gun on me after I asked for the chip. Of course I’m gonna ask for the chip, right? That’s what this whole thing’s about, I gotta know what that does, and yeah, there was an element of petty vengeance, sure, like how can I let this guy who fucked me over sideways get away with it – with his life, ok, I’m willing to let him walk – but not with everything, the whole goddamn Strip. No way. And then it was over. And my role in this should have ended. Instead it just got started. I’m not special or nothing. It didn’t have to be me. Only reason everybody wants shit from me, is I’m a free agent, that’s all. I’ve got no people. I’ve got no side.”

            Arcade was quiet for a moment, then said, “You, uh. You’ve been bottling all that up a while, huh.”

            “Yeah. Sorry.”

            “No, it’s ok. It’s probably good you got it all out. I’m not really the best at – I don’t know what to say, but I’m glad you told me.”

            “Sometimes I think it should be you, in my place, making the choices.”

            “No, thanks.”

            “You’re a good person. One of the best. Better than me.”

            “I don’t know about—”

            “When we get back to the Strip, I wanna introduce you to somebody.”

            “Who?”

            “It would be better just to show you.”

            “O-k…do you mean to be cryptic and ominous, or is that supposed to sound reassuring?”

            “You’ll see. You’ll have to trust my good intentions for now, Arcade. I’ve got nothing else to show for all this other than a fucked-up face.”

            “Your face is fine.”

            The Courier smiled. Arcade was surprised – he’d never heard the other man refer to the scars on his face before, reminders of Benny’s handiwork. One warped the skin above his left eye, at the temple, a puckered starburst. The other bullet had shattered the left side of his face, gone through the cheek below the eye. The scars left behind weren’t from the original healed wound – they were surgical white lines, raised, a little lumpy, not the best cosmetic work Arcade had seen, but a far cry from the worst.

            “I’m surprised there isn’t more,” he blurted.

            “This is nothing,” said the Courier. “You should’ve seen me in Goodsprings. Better that you didn’t.”

            “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

            “Mattered for what?”

            “Just – to me.”

            The Courier rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes.

            Arcade sighed and curled up on his bedroll facing the gray wall. He had no right to feel shut out – he was the one who at every turn deflected and evaded all personal questions. If there was a wall between them, he’d laid its first bricks.

            When the Courier first came to Freeside, he’d spent three days running around town rounding up some addicts Julie sent him after, somehow getting their dealer out of the picture, and arranging a supplies deal with the Garrett’s. He’d taken no payment.

            Julie pointed him out to Arcade when he came back to the Mormon Fort after his glut of good deeds. “That’s him, the guy who’s been helping us out free of charge.”

            “I’d be careful,” Arcade said, crossing his arms and forcing his expression to remain neutral as he observed the Courier from afar inside his tent, as the other man smiled and shared pleasantries with the ghoul woman they had working security. “Anybody giving anything away for free, probably has something to hide.”

            “Or something they’re running from?” said Julie, looking at him from the corner of her eyes.

            Arcade frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

            Julie looked back at the Courier, who was showing the ghoul something on his pip-boy. Arcade really needed to learn her name. She’d told it to him, he just hadn’t remembered. He wasn’t good with that – names, birthdays, all the personal details people said once, they went right through him. He worried this meant he was unempathetic, that he didn’t care. He wanted to remember, it was just that he hardly ever gave anybody his full attention – he couldn’t help that his mind was constantly focusing on the bigger picture in the backburner.

            “Pessimism doesn’t look good on you, Arcade. It makes you seem bitter.”

            “Ouch. Did I do something that made you mad, or are you just the bearer of harsh truths today?”

            “I’m just saying, I know you’ve got the whole ironical detachment thing down pat, but try to remember that’s not you, it’s just what you do so that _being_ you is bearable. But we’ve got more than enough hardened cynics around here, so try and keep it in check.”

            “Wow. You really like this guy, huh? I didn’t mean anything personal – just that we don’t know what his angle is, and— “

            “I’m joshing you,” Julie said, bumping him with her elbow before wandering off into the tower.

            He didn’t think she had been, but the Courier was headed his way, so he didn’t have time to wonder about it. By the end of the day he’d agreed to help the stranger run errands for the Garretts and the King, culminating in an NCR shoot-out and some quick diplomacy on the Courier’s part.

            At the end of the day, back in the Follower’s tents, the Courier said, “Have you been to the Strip?”

            “Can’t say I have. Not really my scene.”

            “I haven’t either, but I figure I’ll see the place before I decide if I like it or not. I’m headed that way. You can tag along, if you want.”

            “What’s on the Strip?”

            “Little while ago I was delivering a package for a Mr. House. It didn’t make it. Guy who shot me in the head over it, he’s in one of those casinos, figured I’d pay him a visit, see what was worth burying me over. I’ve still got the order form. I don’t like loose ends. One way or another I’ll be getting that package where it’s got to go.”

            That was the most the Courier had said about himself all day – at least, the most personal and honest. He was talkative and charming, but most of it was superficial chatter or the kind of flirtatious conversational games Arcade suspected were mostly harmless lies. The honesty was uncomfortable – the ball was in Arcade’s court; his reaction had always been to toss it back as quickly as possible without inviting further overtures. Safer that way.

            “Good to know our postal workers are still out there, fighting the good fight,” he said.

            The Courier smirked, nodded. “Oh, yeah. Great job if you don’t want to think too much about the bigger picture. Real black and white – take this, go here, come back. Anybody can do it, and you don’t gotta have a personal stake one way or another. Or so I thought.”

            “That’s an interesting take. I don’t think there’s such a thing as an amoral line of work or a neutral person, though.”

            “No, I guess there isn’t. But I tried. I guess it’s easy here, with the Followers. You can know you’re doing right by people, and sleep at night.”

            “That is, if we actually have the means to help anyone. Which we have had lately, partly thanks to you. If you’re so…I don’t know, morally troubled, have you thought about joining?”

            “I think I might do the most good working on the outside.”

            “Oh?”

            “I have particular skill sets. They aren’t much help in a clinic.”

            “Well. You never know.”

            The Courier had grinned. “Geez, you flatter me. You could really see me in a place like this?”

            “Why not? From what I’ve seen, you pretty much compulsively help the downtrodden. You seem to really care about people. You’re good with people. They trust you, they like you. They let you help them. Not everybody has that. Why do you think I’m stuck in the back doing botanical research, and not talking to anybody, which is really what half of them need most of all?”

            “Well, it takes all kinds.”

            “I guess so,” said Arcade, staring at the other man and feeling awkward and clumsy and slow, tongue-tied and faint. The Courier was brown-skinned, his hands scarred. He was shorter than Arcade – but then, most everybody was. He wasn’t small, exactly, but wiry and tough. Normally Arcade saw nothing attractive in stylized or obviously well-tended to facial hair, but in this case,  there was something charming about the carefully trimmed mustache and goatee. If he was honest with himself, which he tried to be at least once a day, it was probably that the neat, manicured look of it contrasted with the jagged scarring on the man’s visible skin – on his hands and his face. He wondered if he should feel bad about that, for feeling so endeared by his fantasy of the tragically wounded Courier paying more attention to his carefully trimmed and gelled black hair on account of there being nothing he could do about the scars, trying to show that he did after all still take some pride in his appearance, that it was something he was conscious of and wanted to control.

            He’d be honest with himself more often, if it didn’t almost always end up making him feel like a terrible person.

           

3

            With Boone there was a kind of holy wrath in his silence. The Courier had no direction then, except for a badly wounded pride and a vague haphazard wandering towards the Strip, so it was with a kind of relief that he joined in the sniper in wandering the Mojave with no aim other than to wait for life to slip out the side door, unnoticed as a light-footed robber, and to take as many legionaries with them as they could. That it was a suicide mission he understood implicitly from the very start – although Boone never stropped dropping hints, as though waiting for the Courier to cotton on and leave him to his death.

            The Courier stayed.

            In his life he had been many things – son of a retired soldier turned rancher, caravan hassler and scavenger in his misbegotten adolescence, and then the thing he’d swore he’d never be, a soldier himself during a brief tour of duty. He’d served a year as a grunt at an outpost in a settlement harassed from within by reluctant NCR “citizens” and from without by the raiders he was supposed to protect them from. One day very early on his watch he began to walk west and when the settlement was very small behind him he thought he might as well keep going. He walked out of his duty as unthinkingly as he’d walked into it. For a while he tried to live selling meat and pelts to trading outposts, but couldn’t cut it, and so he proved his deadly accuracy with a pistol and his even more proficient ability to talk down conflict and joined up as a caravan guard. That was stable money, but boring, and difficult. It took a toll on the body, walking without end like that, grappling daily with wild animals and raiders. And through all this he saw many things he could not forget and wouldn’t let himself try – he held very dearly onto the things he saw and felt little by little the tiny seed of venom planted in his heart. He nearly died of infection after one of the other guards triggered a mine beside him, lodging shrapnel in his gut and throwing him against a wall so hard he broke his arm. They dragged him to the nearest settlement, which was Nipton, before the Legion and its crosses. He had fever dreams there which were just regurgitations of the things he’d seen awake – scrawny Fiend children with distended bellies, carrion on the side of the road so mangled you couldn’t tell if it was coyote or human, and every month the Legion creeping further, leaving behind any resistors slaughtered and dismembered, the rest sold off with collars on their necks.

            When he woke and became coherent the town doctor was astounded and had said, “Someone sent you back, boy. Wherever you went, they didn’t want you, or you’d be there.”

            After recovering he did bounty work – a mean line of business, but profitable, and he could do as he pleased without rules and regulations. It was fine for a time – he shut his mind off. He stopped seeing the things that had once so troubled him. He had no more reaction to the carnage than to the weather. This could only go on so long – he wasn’t lucky enough to have an easily beaten conscious. He knew that he could carry on in his line of work – he was very good at it. But not forever. Eventually he would end his life on a whim and feel no more about it than he did anything else, end it out of indifference rather than pain – or he could leave. Being not yet beyond repair, he left and in the nearest town, Primm, the Mojave Express was hiring couriers. He delivered only three packages before the chip.

            It was lovely, to meet people like Veronica and Arcade, people who had dreams the will to move forward, bring change and healing to their people. Boone was not lovely. Boone was sort of what the Courier thought God might be like – single-minded, unforgiving, coldly wrathful. Like a train without a conductor hurtling toward a cliff. The Courier got on that train with him without hesitation and felt relief in doing so. What a burden it relieved – every day they were closer to not having to take another step, make one more decision. Kill the Legion – what a clear, hard goal, and as for the rest, it didn’t matter – no ethical scruples beyond that.

            Alongside Boone he found his sense of humor again. Facing death, he remembered joy. Even if Boone didn’t answer, around the fire the Courier could talk and talk, telling Boone all these things his life had been, without pain or sorrow. He could play the harmonica and laugh at the enduring, long-suffering grimace on Boone’s face which grew deeper with every song. It was fun again, to talk and sing, to find a gecko or coyote in his scopes far away and then let it live, to dig in the hot sand with his bare hands for roots and tubers, to taste clean water and feel the sticky residue of soda on his teeth.

            When it was time to die, the Courier was almost regretful. But what was one more sunset or moonrise? He had seen enough of them to grow tired – even if he thought he’d like another, he’d just grow tired of them again.

 

4

            “I won’t be able to show you that person right away after all,” said the Courier, stuffing his bedroll into his pack while Arcade leaned back against the wall in one of the Lucky 38’s bedrooms.

            “Where are you going?”

“Boone and I have to take care of something.”

            “So you’ve said. I just don’t know what that is, or where it is, and why it has to happen right this second.”

            “We’ve put it off long enough. There’s no reason to delay it anymore.”

            “Why can’t you tell me?”

            “It’s between Boone and I.”

            “Ah. I see.”

            The Courier stood up straight, momentarily abandoning his packing to stare at Arcade. “What do you see?”

            “Nothing. Just, you and Boone. You two’ve always had…a thing.”

            “I don’t know what that means. You know I love you playing hard to get, babe, but sometimes you gotta give me a hand if you want me to know what the hell you’re saying. You’re cagey as hell sometimes.”

            “You don’t have to tell me. It’s not like I have any right to know this, or anything about you. And that’s ok. It’s ok that there are things only Boone gets to know, that’s – I get it. It’s fine.”

            “I don’t get why you’re mad at me.”

            Arcade felt his heart breaking, and cursed himself for getting too attached, despite his own self-imposed distancing. It had all been for nothing – he was jealous. He felt like a jilted lover, which was absolutely ridiculous and unfounded. He needed to let this go, this idiotic, juvenile crush. Who had the time or the self-indulgence for that? Not him.

            “I’m not mad. I’m just worried. One minute we have all the time in the world, you seem like you’ve got some kind of plan, something to tell me – and now you and Boone are up in the middle of the night packing bags, not telling anybody where you’re going.”

            “I don’t always tell everybody where I’m going. You know that. It’s usually just the business of myself and whoever I’m going with. I don’t tell everybody all the things you and I go do.”

            “It’s not the same. Don’t compare it.”

            The Courier’s expression was unreadable. “No, I guess it’s not. I thought it might be like that, too. I wasn’t sure you did.”

            Wasn’t sure what? That Arcade had noticed the Courier and Boone had some kind of secret language, could speak with words and slight gestures, a nod of the head? It was fine, if the Courier had a thing for Boone, even if Arcade couldn’t imagine Boone possibly reciprocating anything tender – although maybe it wasn’t tender at all, maybe that wasn’t what anybody but him wanted anymore, maybe he was a fool. He was definitely a fool. But of course he’d noticed this.

            “You don’t have to rub it in,” Arcade said, cursing himself immediately for letting his temper get the better of him.

            The Courier’s stare was infuriatingly still neutral, but his tone betrayed some hurt and confusion. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

            Arcade took a breath and pushed his hurt down, carefully reconstructing the mask he used to cover up his past. It worked for that, why shouldn’t he be able to use it now? “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business, really. I’m just worried. You two look like – like you’re walking into the end of the world. Why do I feel like I’m saying goodbye to you?”

“Because I’m leaving?”

            “You know what I mean.

            “It’s not easy for me either, you know.”

            “Then why are you leaving? Just – stay. Whatever you two are up to, you don’t have to go tonight, you don’t have to go alone.”

            And now he felt like a child, begging any one of the adults who had raised him to stay, stay with him – was he ever going to stop feeling like that child who couldn’t bear to be left alone?

            “We do,” said the Courier. “You know, Arcade, if I didn’t do the things I do, I wouldn’t be a person you could care about. No one would respect me.”

            “That isn’t true.”

            “It is. You have things you need to do, too. With the Followers. They’re going to need you, Arcade. They’re going to be very important to the future of this place.”

            “You always know more than you let on. Or maybe you’ve been bluffing from the start.”

            “Never to hurt you,” the Courier said, and then he embraced Arcade, and Arcade did not see him again for quite some time, and when he did Caesar was dead, slaughtered in his Fort alongside many of his most trusted men.


End file.
